Is my industry too niche for telemarketing?

We get asked this very common question all the time and the answer is generally no. To understand why this is the case we need to dig down into how we approach telemarketing and the processes involved.

Understanding the target market

Who are we going to target? This is the very first question that needs to be asked as it will ultimately shape the rest of the campaign. The factors to consider are:

Size of company

Turnover

Number of employees

Company type

Sole trader

Ltd

LLP

Start up

FTSE 100

Fortune 500

Location of company

Local

National

Operating zones

Multinational

UK domestic only

Can the data be sourced?

There are two ways of approaching this, firstly list companies/data houses, they will generally have the data that aligns with your target market and depending on the number of records available we will be able to build a picture of the size of campaign and the amount of calls required.

Of course if you are targeting Directors of companies worth over £500,000 then there will be plenty of data, however on the flipside of this if you are looking to target senior engineers in fluid dynamics then the amount of data will be much smaller and harder to obtain, which may mean a data generation campaign will be required.

There are a number of ways to build the data you need through a dedicated lead generation campaign, although this approach will be slower in the long term you will have a far stronger marketing database to work with.

How big is your prospect universe?

Your prospect universe is simply the number of potential prospects that fall within your target market, through research based on the data available and market knowledge we can assess the overall number prospects that should be available to target.

So if you have 10,000 prospects within your universe but you are only talking to 100 of them then that will be far easier to work with.

A common point of discussion is “but I am already talking to everyone” if you feel this is genuinely true then it may well be that telemarketing won’t be able to build you the relationships that you don’t have already.

Is the offering is too complex?

Complex solutions are difficult to sell, they require the right information to be delivered to the right decision maker at the right time, but this does not mean they fall under the niche industry tag.

Telemarketing is not a sell over the phone solution, it offers leads and appointments, understanding the difference here is fundamental to the approach taken.

As this is not a direct sale over the phone and a push to close the deal. The dialler does not need to be able to explain the product/offer in detail, which can be done by the sales team at the appointment when the lead is fed back into your sales funnel allowing you to maintain control of the process.

In short, very few businesses are too niche for telemarketing, it’s simply a case of amending the existing approaches, strategies, and expected results.